


waking up

by robin_hoods



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Dystopia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Game(s), Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-24 04:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17697800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robin_hoods/pseuds/robin_hoods
Summary: Saihara sleeps a waking dream. Ouma dreams the real world away.





	waking up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RougeReii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RougeReii/gifts).



The real world feels more like a dream than it should. Everywhere Saihara turns, he sees people who should be dead. People he saw die. People whose body he discovered. People who weren’t anything but a dirty smear on the floor by the end.

And yet, all of them are here, alive. He can touch them, feel them, their warm skin under his fingertips, the exhale of breath he has to persuade himself not to lean into. He’s still afraid to open his eyes in the morning, to find he has mistaken it for a dream after all.

No matter how happy he is to see his classmates alive and well, though (Momota, clapping him on the back, telling him that obviously his sidekick would succeed; Akamatsu, glad that he fulfilled her wish, tears shining in her eyes), there’s something… not entirely right about this whole spectacle.

It could be Team Danganronpa, giving each other pats on the back for ‘another season well received’. It could be the way everyone just slightly freezes whenever someone brings up killing, or dying, or even Danganronpa itself. They all _act_ like nothing’s wrong, but their façade is only a thin mask, like a layer of make-up covering up bruises on their faces.

Saihara can see it in the deep hollows underneath his eyes, showing he hasn’t slept a wink since waking up. Like everyone else, he ignores their existence, the same way he ignores the tense knot in his stomach whenever a member of Team Danganronpa walks in. He isn’t the only one who can’t sleep, or eat, but some of them keep up the charade of shoveling food inside their mouths, looking more mechanical than Kiibo ever could have.

Kiibo. He isn’t here, unlike everyone else. He was just a computer program, they said, as if that justified their decision to take him offline.

As if any of their words justify what had been done to them.

How is Saihara supposed to take anything they say at face value, when they continue to treat the survivors as winners, and the others as losers. Worse, they encourage them to sign up _again_. “You never know, you might be a winner next time.”

He sees Chabashira not so accidentally stomp on somebody’s foot when they try to approach Angie and Yumeno, forms in hand already.

Saihara feels sick to his stomach every time they’re forced to sit through Danganronpa presentations, or early interviews. He’s not an angry person, not at all, but the smile on the interviewer’s face makes him want to throw his chair out of the window. He wants to kick the camera over and address the audience, whoever is sick enough to watch crap like this, about how they should be ashamed of themselves.

But then he should be ashamed of himself too, shouldn’t he?

Saihara has seen his audition video. The one Shirogane showed him during the trial. And if it’s true (and they’ve assured him it is), he isn’t any better. How many of them are struggling with that? Saihara knows it isn’t just him who has difficulty reconciling the person he used to be to who he is now.

All the while, they’re forced to participate in promotion for the season. Saihara’s seen the photos – their smiles look more like grimaces, their eyes vacant. The photographer had waved his arms around, telling them, “You’ve been so successful! Be happy!” That resulted in possibly the most morose-looking post-game photo of all time – and that includes the post-season 44 photo, when three people had to be hospitalized and looked as if they were about to fall over dead.

In comparison, at least they look moderately healthy.

Team Danganronpa is all about promotion and good PR. The interviews they had to do shortly after the game had finished aren’t the only ones. They just keep coming, and Saihara keeps being asked what it felt like.

“How did you feel, having your life on the line?

“What was it like, losing your friends?”

“Did it upset you, to have to send your classmates to their deaths?”

They’re stupid questions, and Saihara wishes he could tell them to watch the season if they wanted to know how it felt. All they want is to see him crumple, prodding at him, trying to provoke him into a crying fit. (They succeeded multiple times with Yumeno, asking about Chabashira, until aforementioned girl threatened to take their heads off if they ever dared to make her precious Yumeno-san cry again!)

The portfolios, though. Those are the worst. Supposedly, before the game started, it read ‘Meet the participants of season 53!’ Right now, he, Yumeno and Harukawa are on a separate page, loudly proclaiming ‘Meet the survivors!’

It lists their names, date of birth, height, weight, likes, dislikes. There’s even a rectangle box underneath it, titled ‘Significant Quotes’.

(The first quote on Ouma’s page reads ‘nishishi’.)

There’s stuff on there Saihara doesn’t even remember. There’s a biography of him, obviously written by someone who knows how to sell someone as boring as Saihara, boasting about what an excellent student he is, and how his analytical mind will surely help him inside the game. (And it did, the banner above his name screams.)

It’s like the world outside knows him better than he knows himself.

The only person who doesn’t seem to care about the dichotomy between their past and present lives is Ouma. Saihara wouldn’t exactly call him happy (although it’s hard to tell with his ever-shifting moods), but out of everyone, he seems the least shaken by it all, moving on as if it hadn’t even happened in the first place.

He’s all smiles and jokes, more than once poking fun at an interviewer, playing a prank on one of the Team Danganronpa staff, and taking turns bothering his classmates.

“Let’s play a game!” he’ll shout, smacking a box in the middle of the table. “We should do a puzzle!” And once, to Yumeno, “Pick a card, any card!” Surprisingly, it briefly made her smile.

Unlike everyone else, Ouma shrugs off whatever Team Danganronpa orders them to do. He looks fine. (Not that Saihara would release him to the outside world. He’s not sure if the outside world will ever be ready for Ouma Kokichi, supreme leader extraordinaire.)

Today, though, it’s Saihara’s turn to be bothered.

“Hey, Saihara-chan?” It’s only a whisper, but Saihara still drops his chopsticks onto the table, until they roll off onto the floor. “Did I scare you?” Ouma’s tone is amused, and he’s smiling when Saihara turns to look at him.

“Just a bit,” he admits. He hasn’t spent much time with Ouma outside of the game, at least not one on one, but it’s easy to keep track of him. Just follow the noise.

“No worries!” Ouma says. “I’m here to help you out!”

Saihara bends down and picks up his utensils from the floor, considering them a lost cause. He’s almost finished eating, anyway. “I don’t need help with anything, Ouma-kun,” Saihara says, standing up to bring his dirty dishes to the make-shift kitchen. He didn’t exactly finish his dinner, but then he wasn’t very hungry either.

Ouma doesn’t let Saihara’s rejection deter him, and trails behind him. “I’m pretty good at dishwashing, if I say so myself. I haven’t dropped and broken anything in three days! Mom’s really proud of me.”

“I think Toujou-san would prefer it if you stayed out of the kitchen,” Saihara says, rinsing off his dishes. He throws the disposable chopsticks into the trash. Ouma is somewhat accident prone, it appears – he attracts disaster as easily as a preschooler on a bad day.

“Then I’ll keep Saihara-chan company!” Ouma sits down on the only available chair, and taps against the table top with a finger nail. For a house they’re supposed to live in with fifteen of them, the kitchen is surprisingly small.

It’s no wonder Toujou prefers to be in here by herself, if she invited anyone else they’d just get in her way. “And there’s no one else you can keep company?”

“Nope! I kept Saihara-chan for last!”

Saihara knows he’s acting standoffish, but he can’t bring himself to turn around and look Ouma in the eyes. He feels guilty. He knows Ouma made it extremely difficult to be likeable, but Saihara can’t help but think he should’ve tried harder. Or at least he shouldn’t have said…

“You think too much, you know?” Ouma says, not sounding at all like he’s joking. “Maybe it’s that detective brain of yours.”

“…we both know I’m not really a detective, Ouma-kun.”

“Is that because they tell you you’re not? Or because you know you’re not?”

“I’m just… I don’t deserve a title like that. I’ve never solved a case in my life. I don’t have an uncle who’s also a detective. Everything I remember about solving cases, how do I know any of that is real? That it fits reality? That it wasn’t just something someone made up for the hell of it?”

“You don’t,” Ouma says, and Saihara startles when he notices Ouma is standing beside him, leaning against the counter. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t have the skills for it, right? I bet Saihara-chan has noticed all sorts of little details. Like how awful this kitchen is. For the money they _claim_ they have, they could’ve afforded something better.”

The house isn’t, strictly speaking, a house. It’s more or less a building with small shared dorms, and communal areas to relax and eat. They’ve been here for more than four weeks now, and he’s getting sick of it.

“Maybe they just haven’t renovated,” Saihara says. On the first day, when Amami had turned the knob for hot water, he’d accidentally pulled the entire thing off.  

“Maybe they’re lying to our faces,” Ouma says, leaning his chin into his hands. “You’d think I would know, being a self-professed liar, but they’re too unreadable. Too obnoxiously happy.” He sighs, and then winks in Saihara’s direction. “But I bet you already knew all of these things, right, Saihara-chan?”

“Only bits and pieces,” Saihara admits. He doesn’t stop Ouma when the other grabs his hand and guides him out of the kitchen, away from the communal area where Yumeno and Chabashira are watching television, and Amami is doing yoga on the floor.

They walk upstairs, and to Saihara’s surprise, they walk straight past his own dorm towards Ouma’s room. Out of them all, he’s the only one with his own private room. Not because everyone thought he earned it, but nobody had volunteered to share with him.

Just like in every other room, there are two beds pushed against opposite walls, except one looks slept in, and the other is full of… stuff. Saihara tilts his head. Is that the shoe he’s been missing since day two?

“Welcome to my humble abode.” Ouma lets himself fall onto his bed. “Make yourself comfortable!”

Saihara hesitantly sits down on Ouma’s bed, because there isn’t enough space on the other one. He’s still not sure what Ouma wants from him, but… “I’m sorry,” he says. He supposes he should start with that.

“Huh? What for?”

“For what I said, in the game. About you always being alone. I was wrong.” He wrings his hands together. “We haven’t talked much—or at all, really—since we got out, and I… I’m sorry about that, too. I’ve been avoiding you.”

Ouma smiles easily. “You’re not wrong, though. Nobody here actually likes me.” His smile twitches. “That’s a lie, though. I have tons of friends waiting for me outside! I’ll never be alone when I’m with friends, and family, my loyal minions and fans. I have lots of those. Apparently, I have a ton of fan mail.”

“You’ve got friends inside of here, too.” He says it, but Saihara suddenly isn’t sure if he’s right. Sure, he’s seen Ouma around the house, doing his best to lighten the mood, but he doesn’t know whether it’s actually appreciated. Ouma works hard in his own way. Just like he did within the game.

“Do I?” Ouma’s voice is calm, devoid of emotion, although he still wears a smile. “You’ve got me,” Saihara says. “We’re friends. I’ve not been a very good one, though, so I hope you can forgive me for that.”

Ouma’s smile is trembling, and he opens his mouth, then closes it again.

 “You’re not a bad person, Ouma-kun.” It’s as if with every look, Ouma’s mask cracks the slightest bit more, and Saihara presses on. “I was wrong about you, and who you are. You did so much for us inside that place, and even here… You look after us before looking after yourself.”

Ouma had been doing his best to distract the others from their most awful thoughts, but who had been doing the same for him? Nobody. As far as Saihara knows, no one had taken the effort to see how Ouma was doing, because he looked fine, and acted as if he was alright.

Someone had to ask him, though.

“Are you okay, Ouma-kun?”

Ouma starts to shake his head, then stops. “I don’t know.” For the first time since waking up, he looks genuinely helpless, as if someone has helped him out of the dream.

“We’ll be okay,” Saihara says. He says it with conviction, even if he doesn’t know if it’s the truth. “We’ll be fine, eventually.”

“Is that a lie?” Ouma asks, and without thinking about it, Saihara reaches out for him, wrapping his arms around his thin, but solid frame. Ouma leans into him, burying his face into his shoulder.

“We’ll make it be true.”

 


End file.
